Note: please work through the material in Module 2 before beginning this assignment.
For this assignment, you'll be telling a story analogous to the one you put together in Assignment 1. Whereas last week's story topic and format was entirely open, this week's story must be data-driven. You will piece together existing statistics, data visualizations, and/or figures, optionally supplemented by additional (potentially made-up) results you think would help your narrative, and/or (potentially made-up) figures that you sketch (e.g., to create graphs that would help you tell your story). Your story this week can again be about any topic of your choosing, but you must be able to support your narrative with (real or illustrated) data visualizations. In addition, your story should be focused on answering a specific question.
Some formats your story might take could include:
- A re-telling of an existing article or blog post, e.g. from a new perspective or with a new interpretation
- Stitching together a narrative that synthesizes data, results, figures, etc. from multiple existing articles
- A narrated news report of a phenomenon or event
- An entirely made-up study about a real or make-believe place or set of events (e.g., a census report for an extraterrestrial species, or a survey of dinosaur happiness in different climates)
- Any other format you think would allow you to effectively tell a story about data
While not strictly required, I recommend that (at least as a starting point) you follow the general story format that we learned about in Module 1 (e.g., creating something analogous to a Story Spine). For example, consider how elements of the Story Spine can be borrowed to tell data stories:
- Once upon a time: provide relevant background and motivation. Set the stage. Introduce your question.
- Every day: overview what is already known about your question.
- Until one day: explain why what is already known isn't sufficient. Or describe what the problem is (that answering your question will solve or elucidate).
- Because of this: introduce your first new analysis and explain what it means and what new questions it brings up.
- Because of that: use your first analysis to motivate another analysis and explain what it clarifies and what new questions it raises.
- Because of that: use your second analysis to motivate a third analysis. Explain what it clarifies and what new questions it raises.
- Until finally: synthesize an interpretation that explains how your results hang together and what they mean. Answer your question (or say what you've learned about it).
- And ever since then: explain what implications the answer (or insights) you found have with respect to other related questions, life in general, etc.
- Moral of the story: explain why the audience should care and what should they do with this new knowledge you've left them with
You should also:
- Connect with people. Your target audience is your Spring, 2021 Storytelling with Data class (students and instructor).
- Be brief. You'll have a maximum of 5 minutes to share your story with the class in its final form. (There is no minimum story length.)
- Tell a story that you haven't told or heard before. (You can remix existing content, but you'll need to take it in a new direction.)
Please upload your assignment as a single .zip file to Slack (in the #your-stories channel). I'll copy the materials to the public class repository, so please consider that your story will be made public in deciding what story to tell.
Briefly outline your story:
- Introduce the main idea and question. What's the "hook" you'll be using to grab your audience at the start of your story?
- Go through the high-level key plot points (pieces of evidence) in your story. How are you furthering your main idea with each event or piece of evidence?
- Conclude. What's your overall goal or point and what message do you want to leave people with?
You should produce a single document containing your outline (as a .txt, .docx, .md, or .pdf file).
Represent your narrative visually. Draw on principles of representing data and designing effective scientific figures to choose and/or create (sketch) your visuals. Choose your figures carefully-- they should bolster specific key elements of your narrative or argument. It should be clear (potentially with a narrated explanation) exactly what the "point" of each figure is. Your figures can be copied from existing sources, computer-generated by you (or someone else), hand-drawn, etc. Don't worry about making the figures look perfect or about trying to perfect the visual style. It's much more important that you select the "right" figures for conveying and bolstering your message.
You should produce one or more images pasted into a single document (.docx, .md, .pptx, .key, or .pdf). You can optionally include descriptive text to accompany the images.
Write out your story in roughly one page (single-spaced, size 10 font or larger). Include all major plot points and tell the story in a way you think your audience will find to be compelling.
You should produce a single document containing your story (as a .txt, .docx, .md, or .pdf file).
Create a video (up to 5 minutes) telling your story. You should display relevant text or visual aids while you are narrating (e.g., a screencast of a powerpoint presentation, or filming yourself flipping through pages, etc.). The precise format is up to you, but you should include both visual representations of data (broadly construed) and a spoken narrative (broadly construed).
You should produce a single video file (formatted as a .mov or .mp4 file).
Please reflect on the assignment by briefly answering the following questions:
- What went well for you? Which parts did you find easy? Which parts of your story are you most happy with?
- What did you have trouble with? What was the hardest part of telling a story? Which parts of your story are you least happy with?
- How did your experience putting together this assignment compare and contrast with your experience putting together your Assignment 1 story? Were there aspects of last week's storytelling process that you were able to carry over to this week's story? Or was the experience completely unrelated?
- What sort of feedback would be most helpful to you? For example, what insights from others could most help you improve your story? Or were there particular aspects of the storytelling process that you could use help with? What would help make you a better data storyteller?
You should produce a single document containing your answers (as a .txt, .docx, .md, or .pdf file).
Your final submission should comprise a single .zip file containing the following files:
- An outline of your story
- Your written narrative
- A document containing your visual depictions of key elements of your story
- A video file of your story
- A document containing your reflections on the assignment